#Vidar 2

[audiofoolosophy]

Schiit Vidar 2: la recensione.

Parliamo di Vidar 2

Si, lo so, stavate tutti aspettando la recensione di Kara ma preferisco partire dall’ultimo elemento della catena di amplificazione perché ritengo che sia lui l’anello debole di qualsiasi sistema.Avere un preamplificatore in grado di raggiungere prestazioni strabilianti a monte di un finale mediocre non sempre è una buona idea… Per questo motivo ho installato prima il finale, e l’ho provato per…

[firestorm09890]

Here’s every single instance of someone in Kingdom Hearts saying the phrase “Kingdom Hearts” on its own without using it in a bigger sentence

[invidiatechdemo]

a faulty assessment, derived from hindsight

full uncrop under cut.

[askobenzera]

Bakmasını bilene tavanlar çok şey anlatır.

[underrated-kh-blorbo]

Underrated KH Blorbo - Round 2 Match 7

Baldr - I love him so I'll excuse the atrocities, but also I'm going back in time to send him to therapy before he can do atrocities in the first place

VS

Vidar - This guy stops at nothing in the pursuit of justice! Cares more about doing what's right than listening to authority and I repsect that so much <3

[gatormeister]

Been talking about Gundam a lot since I was posting about Turn A while I watched, so I’m going to share my currently built Gunpla. Are all HG Zakus so hard to pose on their feet? I felt like I had to fight to keep Char from falling over while putting his Zaku next to the Sazabi. Anyways enjoy the pictures!

[queer-as-sims]

Beakers - Rotation 2

Calliope and Vidar are now children!

Calliope is EXTREMELY nice, outgoing, and serious, but also very very lazy. She's a Libra, which means she'll be either a romance sim or a popularity sim in my game.

Vidar is very neat and grouchy, kinda playful and outgoing. He's a Taurus, so he'll be either a romance sim or a popularity sim too.

They both grew up well. I was VERY surprised about it! (Poor Vidar was left alone most of the time...)

[Post n.58]

[pjo-polls]

Best Norse God

Loki

Thor

Tyr

Odin

Frigg

Vidar

Heimdall

Frey

Freya

Sigyn

[lokiinmediasideblog]

A lot of the choices regarding Asgard's world-building in the MCU really bother me because they're just so weird and go against historical behaviors of royal families.

A good example is that (unlike the comics and the Norse myths), Odin only has 2 viable heirs (one being biological and the other adopted) that aren't imprisoned forever (*cough( Hela) during Thor (2011).

This was done to focus more on Thor and Loki's relationship, but it's very unusual behavior for a king, who would have a long parade of heirs. This is not the case in the comics, where there's Aldrif, Tyr, Hermod, Honir, Vidar,Balder,Thor, Loki (adopted ward), and now Laussa.

Also, Odin is surprisingly happy to yeet his few heirs into unknown worlds or into prisons.

[audiofoolosophy]

Schiit Kara: la recensione - Finalmente!

Ebbene si: è arrivato finalmente il momento di scrivere due righe sul piccolo prodigio che è Kara. Badate bene: non credo di esagerare nel definire questo preamplificatore un “piccolo prodigio”.È oggettivamente il preamplificatore linea, bilanciato e multi ingresso/uscita, più piccolo che io abbia mai visto ed è caratterizzato, come se non bastasse, da prestazioni decisamente eccezionali in…

[svenskjavel]

2 Ica basic bidrag som gick vidare… Scarlet var ju så sjukt mycket mer inspirerande 🙃

[icypiece]

Att bara 2 går vidare till finalen är så stressframkallande

[morbidology]

Natasha Cornett was a distinctive figure in Betsy Lane, Kentucky, as she fully embraced the goth subculture. At the age of 17, she expressed her individuality by wearing a black dress and a dog collar during her short-lived marriage. Seeking a new chapter in her life, Cornett embarked on a fateful journey that would forever alter her path.

Accompanied by five friends, Cornett and her companions found themselves in New Orleans. However, on April 6, 1997, their lives took a shocking turn. At a rest stop near Bailyton, Tennessee, they encountered a Jehovah's Witnesses family consisting of Vidar, a 34-year-old man, his wife Delfina, 28 years old, and their two children, 6-year-old Tabitha and 2-year-old Peter.

Tragically, the teenagers kidnapped the entire family, leading them to a desolate road where they shot them. The parents lost their lives on the spot, while Tabitha succumbed to her injuries the following day at the hospital. Peter survived the horrific ordeal but was left blind in one eye and permanently disabled due to a spinal cord injury. The teenagers then attempted to flee to Mexico, stealing the family's van in the process, but their escape was short-lived as they were apprehended and arrested.

During her trial, Cornett made unsettling claims, asserting that she was the "daughter of Satan" and that he would aid her in evading a severe punishment. However, her hopes were shattered when she, along with her accomplices, received three life sentences each, condemning them to spend their remaining days behind bars.

[wordsandrobots]

Is it just me or do the pilots that hold onto their suits for longer just generally tend to be stronger than the ones that switch them around? Mika and Gaelio, the ones that held on to the same MS for the longest in the series (Barbatos and Kimaris, respectively) are freakishly powerful with their respective Gundsms. The Bael, being the first Gundam in IBO, stayed with its pilot for the entire duration of the Calamity war. There's some sort of strengthening connection between pilot and machine going on here. The thing with the AV system pretty much being the first system in a mainline show where the pilot has to be physically tethered to the MS might also play into this. Idk this is sort of a thought vomit.

No, it's definitely an interesting angle . . .

Iron-Blooded Orphans isn't strictly the first Gundam series to play with the idea of linking a pilot directly to the 'suit. Arguably, the psycommu from the Universal Century stuff is the earliest human/machine interface in Gundam, albeit one bound up in the psychic powers and suchlike. Mobile Fighter G Gundam introduced a telepresence-style interface allowing martial artists to map their skills on to their machines. Later, Turn A Gundam would include a full-body connector allowing direct operation of a mobile suit, which would be kind of back-adapted into the UC canon via Unicorn's NTD system. All these, however, are presented as exceptional and fairly unique (in G Gundam, the Gundams are their own special class of mobile suit, even if most of the mobile suits we see *are* Gundams).

In IBO, though, the Alaya-Vijnana system is a more widespread, even commonplace technology, allowing the production of cheap, expendable soldiers who require minimal training. True, there is an original or 'perfected' version of the system that accords better with past examples, permitting mobile suits to operate at a superhuman excess. Mostly, however, the A-V is used as an illustration of the impact of military development beyond a national army or clean lab setting. They also have that great visual of the tethering, a far more viscerally arresting image than past attempts to play with the same concept.

This aside, what about the idea of pilots growing stronger the longer they use the same mobile suits?

I think in IBO specifically, there's a few things at play that mean it's worth digging into what we mean by 'stronger'. At a base level, certain mobile suits are described as being more powerful -- the whole point of the Gundam frame is to be exceptionally strong and durable, with two Ahab reactors allowing it to perform fetes beyond other machines. It is however entirely possible for a non-Gundam machine to match or even best a Gundam (Kimaris vs the Grimgerde or Barbatos vs the Reginlaze Julia). Pilot skill is also a factor and on top of that there's the A-V system, which allows for more instinctive control over a mobile suit, making it a physical extension of the pilot. In some cases, this permits novice pilots to overcome those who we can assume to have had much more training and experience; conversely, in others, a skilled non-A-V pilot can overcome pilots using the system -- see the Turbines vs the Brewers, for example.

Then there's the fact Gaelio is a cheating cheater who cheats. The Alaya-Vijnana Type E exists specifically because he comes up short in his fight with McGillis; even with Kimaris' extra oomph, he doesn't have the raw skill necessary to beat his old friend. So he lets Ein's undead brain do the flying instead. The way it's presented, while Gaelio is technically in Kimaris' driver-seat throughout, he isn't actually in control for the majority of its operations during Season 2. The writing is very explicit that the Type E is puppeteering his body, allowing it to exceed those pesky human limitations without resorting to full-on Alaya-Vijnana surgery. Gaelio selects the target, yes, but it's otherwise not *his* strength at play. In fact, the Eve of Vidar side-story shows the system can run entirely out of his control, to the point of tearing off and destroying everything in its path (hence the 'calibration' that keeps Gundam Vidar out of action for the first few episodes of Season 2).

[As an aside, we know the IBO setting has AI technology capable of matching and exceeding human pilots, and that mobile suits have algorithmic control programs assisting with their operation, so it wouldn't be out of the question to do all this without the squishy bits. Certainly, on the face of it, there seems little reason not to just plug Ein's brain into Kimaris and let it have at. But since military AI has a history of working out . . .

. . . poorly, it would make sense for there to be restrictions on its use. It might even be unquestioned best practice to always have a human with their hand on the on/off switch. So whether or not the Type E is actually capable of running a Gundam on its own, Gaelio's presence is probably non-negotiable.]

My point is, Gaelio is functionally a doorstop when the Type E is in operation so can we actually say he's getting stronger as a pilot over the course of the series? He certainly expends a lot of effort and makes personal sacrifices in order to reach a position where he beats McGillis. He has to be physically augmented to use the Type E, breaking his previous moral stance on that kind of thing. And Kimaris itself undergoes a lot of upgrades aimed at combatting McGillis' style of fighting. So in a sense, yes, being Kimaris' pilot for such a length of time means he gets stronger. Yet isn't it more like a lot of compensation for a persistent lack of strength? Gaelio himself doesn't necessarily improve through all this; it's more that he's willing to do things that give him a greater edge.

Which is a good point to turn to our other example. Mikazuki and Barbatos follow a similar trajectory over the course of the show, with the 'suit undergoing constant upgrades and Mika gradually removing the limits on his connectivity with it. True, it's not a case of Barbatos using Mika's body but --

Well, let's back up on that one. Because it isn't presented as Mika becoming a redundant extension of his 'suit. He is always clearly the one in control. However, when he takes . . . let's call it the first-stage limiter off his Alaya-Vijnana system in Edmonton, demanding more so he can beat the Graze Ein, he suddenly knows how to use Barbatos' sword to its fullest extent. Previously, his comments suggest he's at 'pointy end goes in the other guy' level with the thing. After the connection is deepened, he's able to perform incredibly precise cutting strikes and take Ein to pieces. As if the information on doing that was already stored inside the machine and just needed to be unlocked.

Yet the interesting thing is, he doesn't use that skill again. Not directly. Barbatos Lupus' sword is designed more for clobbering than slicing, for all that it *is* a sword, distinct from the clubs he favoured before. Later, he'll return entirely to the mace as his principle melee weapon. Almost as if he took the skills he'd . . . downloaded and then adapted them to his existing strengths.

That seems to be what is happening here. Where Vidar/Kimaris is a deliberately constructed weapon targeting McGillis, circumventing the shortcomings of its pilot, Barbatos is somewhat more organically tailored to act as an amplifier for the man in the cockpit. It's reworked to fit his style. Even in the middle of battling Hashmal, where we might expect residual performance data to come to the fore again, instead Mikazuki's existing impulses go into overdrive, crushing everything in his path with speed and raw power.

So the longer Barbatos is with Mika, the more it resembles him and the more strongly they act as a single unit. Not accidentally, either. Despite the implied contrast above, it's very much something Tekkadan and Teiwaz's mechanics deliberately engineer over the course of events. But it's based on Mikazuki's personality and his preferences (he seems to have looked at Hashmal's tail and gone 'I need that'), rather than with a particular end in mind.

I think if I was going to draw a thesis out of this, it'd be that all this is just an extreme version of something that happens with any pilot. Amida outfights Julieta (someone whose life is literally dedicated to mobile suit combat) and the Julia (a machine at the bleeding edge of 'suit development) in a relatively unexceptional Hyakuren. That is to say, the Hyakuren isn't a very flashy mobile suit. But this *is* a custom model and more importantly, one Amida has been using for a considerable length of time. We know pilots update their 'suits using data from old fights, that they tweak the settings to better fit their abilities, and that they train extensively in simulations. It makes sense for someone like Amida, with likely approaching a decade of additional experience, to be nigh-on unstoppable compared to everyone around her. She's put in the effort. She's gotten comfortable with her equipment. She knows exactly what she's doing.

The Alaya-Vijnana exaggerates this effect, allowing both rapid advancement in ability (the Tekkadan boys are exceptionally quick students because part of the point of the surgery is to circumvent learning curves) and for the pilot to adapt to the machine and vise versa. I think the longer someone used an A-V with the same 'suit, the more they'd be able to understand that 'suit's quirks and direct maintenance to correct or increase them. Ultimately, though, I suspect that's just speeding up a general rule.

Because the A-V is never presented as an instant-win condition. It doesn't trump everything else on its own. Skill still matters. Experience still matters. Ein runs rings around Shino while they're using comparable machines because, A-V or not, Ein trained for years in a Graze; Shino had been using one for a few weeks, at most.

I love that about IBO. It never has any of the tech be magic by itself. You need a pilot willing to go the extra mile and put in the effort to become something truly incredible.

[lightandfellowship]

I love how Vor is baring her heart and soul to her friends and this is what Vidar's face looks like throughout the entirety of the cutscene.

"Hey, are you done yet? We gotta get going; I have an appointment with Odin at 2:00 and I don't want to be late."

[goldensunset]

fashion show part 2!

(designs and names under the cut for reference)